In a recent interview, FromSoftware revealed how challenging the Elden Ring Nightreign DLC, The Forsaken Hollows, will be. However, some hardcore players might be disappointed by the new content’s difficulty level.
Elden Ring Nightreign DLC: It’s Harder — But Maybe Not as Difficult as Shadow of the Erdtree
When Elden Ring DLC Shadow of the Erdtree was first released, many players were surprised by just how difficult it was. In fact, it was so challenging that players actually complained about it and wanted it fixed. Which is kind of shocking, considering the Soulsborne community kind of knew what they were getting into at this point. However, according to a new interview, the Elden Ring Nightreign DLC, The Forsaken Hollows, might not be as challenging.
FromSoftware director Junya Ishizaki revealed the difficulty level of the Elden Ring Nightreign DLC, The Forsaken Hollows, during the conversation. “It’s definitely a little bit harder. But it’s not ridiculous or anything like that. But it’s still within what we would consider to be a fair challenge.” Ishizaki also opened up about how the studio had challenges finding the right difficulty balance. The reason? They needed to consider newer players when making The Forsaken Hollows expansion.
“The main takeaway we had post-release was just there was a lot of trouble trying to get the balancing right. We didn’t want it to be so hard that new players can’t get into it. So whenever people who have played the main game extensively go into the DLC content, they’ll be able to have a bit of that feeling like they had when they first played Nightreign, where there’s still a bit that they’re trying to figure out.”
Elden Ring The Forsaken Hollows Borrows From Shadow of the Erdtree
While some hardcore Elden Ring players may be disappointed that the Nightreign DLC won’t be crushingly difficult, it doesn’t mean it won’t be challenging. Another interesting revelation from this FromSoftware interview is that The Forsaken Hollows actually borrowed a lot from Shadow of the Erdtree. Junya Ishizaki revealed that many members of his team were actually playing the Elden Ring expansion while making Nightreign’s DLC.
“It’s one of those things where a lot of our staff have also been playing Shadow of the Erdtree as the development for Nightreign has been going on. So there’s probably a little bit of influence there.” However, even more interesting is that the Elden Ring Nightreign DLC The Forsaken Hollows has a more vertical map.
“The idea behind that was that the original Nightreign map was definitely very horizontally focused, and when looking at that through the lens of working on DLC, we were thinking where else to go but up, right? We can add verticality to this and do it in a way that doesn’t detract from the horizontal aspect of the map. So that was where that came from.”
Sound familiar? Yeah, it definitely sounds a lot like Shadow of the Erdtree’s layered vertical map, which you could travel up and down. Although it’s kind of hard to pinpoint how challenging the Forsaken Hollows will actually be, given that From Software’s idea of a “fair challenge” is likely still brutally difficult. Let’s be real. The Elden Ring DLC The Forsaken Hollows is now out on PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC.
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